Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil

Mopar Stars — 2026

“Mopar Stars sound instantly familiar, but the way they fuse power pop, punk urgency, and ragged indie rock feels entirely their own.”

Mopar Stars are one of those bands that sound instantly familiar without ever landing on a single obvious reference. The Philadelphia group caught my attention back in 2023 with a short cassette, and now Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil is the full payoff. It plays like a collision of two golden eras of guitar pop. There is the big seventies power pop swagger, all huge riffs and melodies that reach for the back row, and then there is the chime and ache of that brief mid nineties window when a hook could break a band and stick around for twenty years. Nao Demand sings and plays like he means every word, and the band around him keeps things loose and alive. The real trick is how they wear their influences like an old denim jacket, familiar and broken in but still unmistakably theirs.

What I like most is that this feels like a classic rock and roll record that still slots right into the current indie scene. The songs are sincere and the guitars do all the work. The best moments bury a giant melody under a little bit of noise and dare you not to sing along. The mastering gives everything punch without flattening the swing. Mopar Stars specialize in a scrappy brand of indie rock where fuzz covered guitars, power pop melodies, and punk urgency all pull in the same direction. Their songs hit with the force of a garage band but linger like classic pop, landing between The Replacements’ ragged heart and Cheap Trick’s gift for unforgettable hooks. Eleven songs in twenty eight minutes leave zero room for filler and show a band that clearly loves what it grew up on. This is the sound of a group that knows exactly who it is, and I keep coming back to it because it is catchy as hell.